1. Field
The disclosed and claimed concept relates generally to handheld electronic devices and, more particularly, to a handheld electronic device and an improved method employing the logical proximity of characters in a spell checking operation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Numerous types of handheld electronic devices are known. Examples of such handheld electronic devices include, for instance, personal data assistants (PDAs), handheld computers, two-way pagers, cellular telephones, and the like. Many handheld electronic devices also feature wireless communication capability, although many such handheld electronic devices are stand-alone devices that are functional without communication with other devices.
Spell checking functions are generally known, but spell checking functions typically rely upon base characters in determining whether or not an input such as a word is misspelled. For instance, the twenty-six Latin letters are considered to be base characters, and many of the Latin letters can additionally have one or more diacritical forms, such as when a Latin letter base character additionally includes a diacritical mark or accent, such as a circumflex, a cedilla, a tilde, etc. In some languages, such as the Italian language, the various accenting applied to the various characters in words can determine the grammatical content of the words, and certain grammatical rules exist which require certain accented forms in certain circumstances, such as at the end of a sentence.
Most electronic devices that have a text input function are capable of generating all of the various diacritical forms of the twenty-six Latin letters. Unfortunately, generation of the diacritical forms of Latin letters can be cumbersome. In some circumstances, it may be necessary to consult a table of diacritical forms of base letters in order to choose and insert a particular diacritical character. In other circumstances, it is necessary to scroll through a list of the various diacritical forms of a letter in order to identify and select a preferred diacritical form. Not only can such effort be cumbersome, but also it is error prone. It thus would be desirable to provide an improved electronic device and method that overcome these and other shortcomings.
Similar numerals refer to similar parts throughout the specification.